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151st Akutagawa & Naoki Prize Nominees

The nominees for the 151st Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes have been announced. The prizes will be awarded on July 17th.

The Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes are usually awarded in January and July each year. The Akutagawa Prize is generally considered the biggest Japanese prize for literary fiction, while the Naoki Prize is the most prestigious for popular fiction, however you care to define either of those fairly arbitrary categories. The Akutagawa focuses on mid-length fiction by writers who are not yet well-known. Both were established in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan to honor the memories of Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Naoki Sanjugo. Anglophone readers of Japanese fiction are likely to recognize Akutagawa as the author of “Rashomon” and “The Nose”, and long-time readers of this blog may recognize Naoki.

So without further ado, here are your Akutagawa Prize nominees for July 2014:

A novel with a new feel “written with the assumption that the reader is a Chinese person learning Japanese.” Our protagonist, Japanese and raised in China, returns alone to Japan for visa reasons. And then something unexpected occurs…!?

The only prediction I’m willing to make: you’ll never see it translated.